was he right?
>>25347191I think he is, but different languages have different cultural contexts to languagesure there's million different things you can like about literature and I do enjoy the use of some big words here and there, but I really like clear and clever use of words. For instance, in Spanish, Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote) is known for his cleaver use of the language and a general disregard to more formal highly verbose prose (like Quevedo), but that's a perspective coming from the Golden Century of Spain. Cervantes is still far more "elegant" than your average contemporary writer. In my opinion, good Spanish speaking writers aren't too fixated in being too "wordy", which is good. Juan Rulfo (Pedro Páramo) is a good example of someone that uses very normal words, but in a clever and poetic way. Even Borges, who uses big words from time to time, is very tame and quite clear most of the time. I suppose, and this is only a guess on my part, that there's a certain level of tradition, coming from Cervantes, that doesn't equate big words with good literature.I think from an English perspective things differ, because I believe there's a class divide from the words people use. Simpler everyday words remark that you are simple minded or something along the lines. Writers like Nabokov give me an impression of wanting to differentiate themselves with the "lower" writers, which I don't personally get, but he achieves that with the use of words. Reading Ulysses on English felt too dizzing to me and I lost interest. Even if he is very verbose with some neverending phrases, I still like Cormac McCarthy's prose on English, it feels dense but it doesn't feel too pretentious or like he is trying to impress the reader.
TELEVISION
Did Faulkner really think Hemingway didn't know words?
IS
FOR
NIGGERS
>>25347249no its a made up rivalry
>>25347191There's nothing wrong with using big words if you're using them for a reason, and there's nothing wrong with avoiding them. Faulkner and Hemingway are both good. They're very different but they both use their words with purpose, imo
i dont like Hemingway much but this is a based take. faulkners superficial posturing is pathetic
>>25347191Yeah, I'm pretty much on H.'s side in that particular spat, although there are few 100%s in the world.Faulkner's often tiresome when he gets up on tiptoe. He's not like Melville, whose grandiose ranting is always great.I don't go to F. for the ten-dollar words and five-hundred-word sentences. Sometimes they're OK. But often I'm just putting up with them for what else he has to offer — the incisive observations told simply and plainly, almost in passing:Someone comes through the hall. It is Darl. He does not look in as he passes the door. Eula watches him as he goes on and passes from sight again toward the back. Her hand rises and touches her beads lightly, and then her hair. When she finds me watching her, her eyes go blank.— As I Lay Dying
>>25347191The descriptive narration ostensive mode might be demonstrated at idea patterns and at words and paragraphs and phrases and parataxis
>>25347247>class dividegoes the other way. in england there was the whole ‘u and non-u’ discourse; they found the upper class and working class often spoke plainly and directly, using the same words, while the middle class tended to use ‘fancier’, french words for things, in an attempt to sound more refined.
>>25347191I think that this attitude has set us on a downard spiral towards mediocrity that led to our current condition of extreme anti-intelectualism. Every generation thinks the previous one was too pompous and academic and that they need to be simpler and more AUTHENTIC than the previous one, so now we have slam poetry, rap being taught at english departments and the only books that get published are YA novels wirtten by midwit women. If you read anything else you're either a chud or a pseud.
>>25349431The upper class stopped doing that specifically because the middle class was emulating them and that had to set themselves apart. That always happens. Same reason the upper class in England switched to non-rhotic accent even though it was a defining characteristic of what distinguished their accent before
>>25350284not really - the upper class, like the lower, feel no need to perform. RP is (fundamentally) a middle-class thing. the lesson here is the effort always betrays you.
Poets are rare among mankind, but salesmen aren't. Faulkner strikes me as the former. Hemingway the latter. Where Faulkner had an appreciation for language and a desire to express his ideas as beautifully as possible, Hemingway believed in scarce, simple language and grand ideas the passage of time has revealed he had no genuine understanding of. And a brutal irony is when Faulkner does choose to use simple language, he employs it far more memorably: "Television is for niggers."
>>25350470actually, just going off your own description (i’ve only read a little hemingway and no faulkner), EH fallsmore in line with poets. poetry (real poetry anyway) isn’t about disguising simple statements in masquerade dress, it isn’t purely aesthetic, it gives you a shudder.
>>25350487>poetry (real poetry anyway) isn’t about disguising simple statements in masquerade dress, it isn’t purely aestheticYes it is.
>>25350489what does your definition of poetry make but a dead bore to all but specialists?
Hemingay and Fagner both suck. End of story.
